Shocking!

Talk about a small world!!  Chinese TV is strange, but when I was flicking through it today I came across the familiar face of fellow cockney Ian Wright.  As if that wasn’t weird enough, he then goes on location… to my Home Town!!  I absorb the sight of a parade of shops that I have known since my schooldays …and I am now sitting on the other side of the world in isolation beyond anything I have experienced before.  It’s an uncanny contrast, but it is also so exciting that even here, there are connections to a recognisable world.

Culture shock was quite an issue when I first arrived in China.  It is the anxiety that results from losing all familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse  (ref).  I certainly felt the overwhelming …disablement, really.  I liken visiting China with landing on Mars.  I’m not kidding!  This may be less so now that media coverage and Westernisation is increasing, however, when I first visited China in 2001 I spent the week permanently wide eyed …and mouthed!  My isolation at the start of this trip I think was an excellent strategy for moving quickly through the initial stages of culture shock.  (Not that it was pre-planned… Read the next post for that back-story…)

Throughout this trip I rarely came across reminders of the world I was from, and when I did it made my day.  I never found a reference so close to home as today’s TV show – and it was found on the day I would be in maximum culture shock.  Quite the coincidence …or maybe there is a god in China?